Milliliters to US Fluid Drams (mL to fl dr)

1 milliliter equals 0.2705121816 US fluid drams (rounded).

1 milliliter = 0.2705121816 US fluid drams

How to convert milliliters to US fluid drams

To convert milliliters to US fluid drams, multiply the number of milliliters by 0.2705121816. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply US fluid drams by 3.696691195 (rounded).

US fluid drams = milliliters × 0.2705121816

Example: 10 milliliters = 2.705121816 US fluid drams.

Pints, quarts, gallons and fluid ounces differ between the US and the UK. Units are labeled 'US' or 'imperial' to avoid confusion.

About these units

Milliliter (mL)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One thousandth of a liter, or exactly 1 cubic centimeter. Used for medicine, cooking and small containers.

Milliliters inherit everything from the liter, since the prefix simply means one thousandth. Because the liter is a cubic decimeter, a milliliter works out to exactly one cubic centimeter, a coincidence the metric system built in on purpose so that volume, length and mass interlock. One milliliter of water has a mass of about one gram, so a dosing syringe, a kitchen scale and a measuring jug can all be checked against one another.

Today milliliters dominate wherever small amounts must be measured precisely: medicine, flavorings, perfume, shampoo and the fine print on drink labels. Spelling is a mild regional split, with uppercase mL preferred in the United States, Canada and Australia and lowercase ml common in the UK and Europe. For scale, a US teaspoon is just under 5 mL, a US tablespoon is about 14.8 mL, and the US nutrition-label cup is exactly 240 mL, so one such cup is 240 of these tiny units.

1 milliliter = 0.001 liters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Litre; NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8: conversion factors for volume; 21 CFR 101.9: nutrition labeling household measures

US Fluid Dram (fl dr)

US customaryTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

One eighth of a US fluid ounce (3.6967 mL). Used in old pharmacy measures.

Drachma, the Greek coin and weight, lies behind the dram. The Attic drachma weighed about 4.37 g and the Roman one about 3.41 g, and the apothecaries borrowed the name for both a weight and a liquid measure. The US fluid dram is one eighth of a US fluid ounce, 3.6966911953125 mL, and it divides into 60 minims. Its British imperial counterpart, spelled drachm in pharmacy usage from around 1900, is smaller at 3.5516 mL.

Doctors once used the dram as the size of a teaspoonful, and early nineteenth-century prescriptions assumed a teaspoon held 60 minims. By 1876 household teaspoons had grown to 80 to 85 minims, which made that shortcut unreliable for medicine. Pharmacy is now metric, but the fluid dram survives in the capacity of pill bottles and vials. In casual speech a dram of whisky is a small pour, about 25 mL in an English pub and 35 mL in Scotland, which is a different thing from the pharmacist's unit.

1 US fluid dram = 0.003696691195 liters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Fluid dram; Wikipedia: Minim (unit)

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